


Tales of a Wayside Romance 1930

by olderbynow



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: But As I Am Still Me, F/M, Ficathon 2, I HAD Meant to Edit This Properly Before Reposting, Mainly Being Reposted So OllyJay Will Feel Obligated To Finally Read It, Repost of deleted fic, here you go, well...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2019-01-29 10:37:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12629172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olderbynow/pseuds/olderbynow
Summary: “I am who I am, Jack. I can’t give that up.”“I’m not asking you to give it up. I would never ask you to do that.”“So you’re giving up me, instead? What we do best, us, together. You’d sacrifice that? If you did that, Jack, I would feel... I would feel like it was you lying in that wreckage. Please, can you think about that?”“I will.”This is sort of that, but set afterDeath Do Us Part(Repost of deleted ficathon fic)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheEyeofTheOncomingStorm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheEyeofTheOncomingStorm/gifts).



> Prompt: “Two ships passing in the night”. (Which I swear is relevant. Sort of.)
> 
> The quotes at the beginning of each drabble are from the poem _Tales of a Wayside Inn 1863_ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. There are 28 drabbles because that poem is 28 chapters long, and there are three parts because that poem is three books long. Which is the most sensible thing about this, to be completely honest.

I _._  
_The inspiration, the delight,_  
_The gleam, the glory, the swift flight,_  
_Of thoughts so sudden, that they seem_  
_The revelations of a dream._

It had seemed to simple, then, standing in that field, propelled forward by the momentum of his ‘romantic overture’.

Less so in the quiet darkness of home; this humdrum existence he is meant to simply leave behind.

“Come after me, Jack Robinson.”

He would have agreed to almost anything to stretch that moment, to prolong the feeling of _having her_ , knowing even then that it couldn’t last.

But now, that moment passed, he wonders if it is not in fact better to leave it there, to walk away while he can still pretend he has the strength to.

He knows she can destroy him if he lets her - he suspects, too, that he could probably destroy her if he let himself. This is what he fears the most: that without meaning to he will clip her wings, change her, make her who she doesn’t want to be; pull her down with the weight of his love.

He had thought, for a while, that he was the only one weighed down by it - that she would soar above him, stay always just slightly out of his grasp - but as time went by he found her drifting ever lower, closer and closer, until finally she was near enough that he could reach out and touch her. The temptation to do so was resisted only because he knew she could float away again at any moment, and he holds no illusions that having to let go won’t be nearly impossible.

Lately he has let himself be convinced that she would not want to drift away, that the weight of her own feelings would hold her in place. This is the conviction that drove him to that field, that made him act even when the possibility of her flying away went from metaphor to urgent reality.

Now she truly would fly away and leave him grasping at thin air, and so he acted, letting circumstance force his hand, intending not to hold her in this place, but to give her a reason to return to it, to stop her drifting off in another direction as she had come so close to doing, or at least it felt that way to him, over and over.

It had not occurred to him - and now he wonders why it hadn’t **,** because the suggestion seems so inherently _her_ in its absurdity and contradiction of everything he knows about her that it really should have done - that she would ask him to follow her. That she would want to be chased, to be grasped for, to be held down.

In that moment he would have done it, but now, left with the memories of her free of any restraints, he wonders if what he wants for himself is what he’d want for her as well.

What he wants is forever, but even if she offered him that, he’s not sure he’d be willing to accept it.

_II._  
_The watchful night-wind, as it went_  
_Creeping along from tent to tent,_  
_And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"_  
_A moment only he feels the spell._

“There’s a whole world out there, Jack. He’s the least of your worries.”

These are the words she leaves him with, this is her goodbye. It is a taunt, meant to spur him into action, but she wonders now if that was a mistake.

As she leaves Australia further and further behind her, the taste of Jack’s lips long since faded, she leaves behind also the certainty of what she had felt them becoming. Her father’s incessant complaints about the plane, about being in the air, about being on the ground, about the food and the people, about the fact that they’re travelling too fast and not fast enough, grate on her nerves; and the more she longs for the steadying presence that Jack has come to represent, whether she wants him to or not, the further away it seems, both physically and in her mind.

She can remember, exactly, how he looked at her as they came apart, she can picture the way he has looked at her a hundred times, his steady gaze grounding her when she felt unhinged, untethered. She remembers this exactly, until the moment she tries to. Then it is just out of reach, his features blurring until she isn’t entirely sure what he looks like, beyond the basic description that anyone could give of dark hair, blue eyes, delightfully well-cut three piece suit.

All well and good as a description of a suspect, but rather less so when she’s attempting to reassure herself that the distance growing between them is entirely geographic. She wants to believe that whatever his intentions were in coming to that field, whatever his expectations, they will last until she returns. He is her constant, ever-changing in her mind, refusing to be pinned down as only one thing - partner, friend, lover - but always there, a pillar she can lean on if she needs to.

She hopes time will not change that, she hopes her leaving him behind does not change that, she hopes the suggestion that he follow her, the warning made in jest that the whole world is a threat to them, does not change that.

She hopes that he takes her up on it, but knows that he won’t. His life is here, and he is a pillar, and pillars cannot be easily moved.

And yet, when she isn’t trying, when she finally relents and lets go of both memories and fantasies, she remembers the look in his eyes when she said it, the suggestion that he would in fact follow her anywhere, whatever was holding him back until then having loosened its grip at last.

There is a whole world out there, and she wishes he’d come and experience it with her, but she wishes, too, that her pillar will be there waiting for her when she returns.

_III._  
_The voice was hers, and made strange echoes start_  
_Through all the haunted chambers of his heart._  
_As an aeolian harp through gusty doors_  
_Of some old ruin its wild music pours._

It happened, once, that he lost her.

It happened, once, that he let himself believe. In them. In the possibility of them.

In the unending stretch of moments in between a muddled telephone message - the who and why and what getting lost somewhere down the wire - and her identifying the victim as if his world had not just been torn apart and put back together again, he let himself think about the could-have-been that he had lost, because he no longer had to consider the possible failure.

He did it only because he thought she was gone for good, that there could be no chance, no hope. Safe from the risk of failure he let himself contemplate success at something that could never be.

And then there she was, as alive and impervious to danger as ever, and just then the impulse to lock her up and throw away the key - for her own damn good - was stronger than ever, and he had to fight it with every fibre of his being.

He had given himself a glimpse into the could-have-been, all the possibilities he had lost, and then those possibilities were thrust back at him, taunting him with their continued impossibility. Because she was still alive, but she still wasn’t his.

But knowing, then, the pain of losing her, he could not bring himself to face that pain a second time, to live again in a world where the impossible could be possible, only to have it taken from him, and so he walked away.

He never had her, but it happened, once, that he lost her.

_IV._  
_The Rabbi bowed his head in silent prayer;_  
_Then said he to the dreadful Angel, "Swear,_  
_No human eye shall look on it again;_  
_But when thou takest away the souls of men,_  
_Thyself unseen, and with an unseen sword,_  
_Thou wilt perform the bidding of the Lord."_  
_The Angel took the sword again, and swore,_  
_And walks on earth unseen forevermore._

Some days, London is grey and cold, a chill that is in her bones as much as it is in the air around her. The parties seem never-ending; glittering lights, champagne and clothes not made to be seen by the same people twice, but neither alcohol nor open fireplaces at the edge of dance floors are enough to warm her all the way through.

Her mother has persuaded her to stay at least through Christmas and her agenda is more than obvious, if no less hopeless than in the past: Since the last time she was here, Phryne has learned to find the men of London’s high society boring and uninteresting. Eligible and charming, to be sure, very suitable to her mother’s purpose, but infinitely dull once the opening compliments have been made and they’re expected to carry a conversation. Anecdotes of hunting parties and horse-breeding can no longer hold her interest the way she’s sure they used to. (The way she used to be able to pretend they did.)

She would like to say that London has changed in her absence, that it failed to carry on without her, but the truth is, she is the one who has changed. She is homesick, not just for Melbourne but for the London she used to inhabit, the London that is still here (unchanged in essentials, carrying on perfectly well - it seems hardly to have noticed that she was gone), but no longer fits her. Absurdly, she is homesick for who she used to be, because who she used to be would have borne this better. Not less scornfully or more patiently, but better, the alternative to this world something vague and insubstantial, rather than a very real life she longs to return to.

Melbourne has changed her; she would have liked to say ‘for the better’ (She will say ‘for the better’ if challenged on the matter) but she isn’t sure. How is it better, twirling around on this dance floor, listening to the sound of a man’s voice telling a story she isn’t hearing, about people she knows but doesn’t remember meeting?

She has tried to throw herself into it, to smile and laugh and dance and flirt until she forgets, but while her efforts may convince everyone else, to her own eyes and ears they fall flat, everything slightly off key. These men will laugh at anything she says, do anything to get into her good graces and, she knows, her bed, but rarely has she been less inclined to bestow either favour on anyone.

If only one of them would challenge her, would push back and not merely give in to her every whim.

The more evenings she spends sipping champagne and watching these simpering men, the more she realises that she would enjoy herself so much more just sitting in her parlour drinking whiskey and listening to Jack chiding her for breaking whatever law he seems intent on upholding that particular week. He would let her push her intellect against him, and he would push back, challenge her ideas, force her to be better.

Most of all, she is homesick for that particular feeling, for that give and take.

_V._  
_From hall to hall he passed with breathless speed;_  
_Voices and cries he heard, but did not heed,_  
_Until at last he reached the banquet-room,_  
_Blazing with light, and breathing with perfume._

He writes the letter, then crumbles up the pieces of paper and throws them away; writes the letter again. He goes on in this way for a week, finding the words and then discarding them, because he doesn’t know if they are the words she wants to hear.

His ticket has been purchased, his date of departure looming ever closer, and he cannot find the right way to tell her that he’s coming.

He regrets, now, the decision not to ask her. Did she mean it when she asked him to come after her? Was it a suggestion to be taken literally or merely a demand that he do _something_ other than sit in her parlour and drink her whiskey and pretend that could be considered wooing and that it would lead to anything at all other than more of the same?

Does she expect him to travel halfway around the world for her? And, much more importantly: does she want him to?

Two months have gone by already, and something like another two will pass before he’s in London. She could change her mind a hundred times over in that time - or just once, which is really as much as it would take for him to get off that boat and stand there with his hat in his hand, foolish and unwanted.

But askingseems even more impossible than simply doing, to have his hopes dashed in so direct a way, after finally letting hope float to the surface. And lurking underneath the fear of rejection also something bordering on conviction that she does not want to be asked, that the question would somehow negate the gesture.

And so he has purchased his ticket, made arrangements with Russell Street regarding work, and let the practicalities distract him for as long as he could.

But not telling her at all, merely turning up on her doorstep one day, seems to him like a plan destined to fail in one of a million ways (all variations of scenarios in which she is not there, she is not alone, she does not want him there) and so as well as that might work as a romantic overture, he cannot bring himself to do it that way. He must let her know, must give her a chance to warn him off if his presence is unwanted.

In the end, time and fear make the choice for him. He sends a telegram two days before his departure. Ticket purchased, estimated time of arrival. Stop. It is concise, it makes no assumptions. Except it is a whole world of assumptions, the fact that he is going at all.

A reply is delivered not long after, enough time passing to allow him to go through several cycles of regret at his hastiness (she would laugh in his face at him calling it that) and presumption (will she laugh in his face at that?), but so little of it, as well, that he knows her response was all but immediate.

“I hope sooner.”

_VI._  
_And they answered: "O Queen! if the truth must be told,_  
_The ring is of copper, and not of gold!"_

Christmas is a gay affair, and she lets herself (makes herself) get swept up in it, one party after another for weeks; and then somehow, magically, snow on Christmas Eve, the ground white and fresh as she leaves the party.

She twirls in it, her dress and coat billowing around her, only just resisting the temptation to stick out her tongue to taste it. When she opens her eyes, dizziness slowing her down, she sees Rupert Something-Or-Other - second son of the Earl of Somewhere, unmarried, just back from India where he’s made an absolute fortune, according to her mother - leaning against a pillar at the top of the steps leading to the house and watching her, a smile playing on his lips. From this distance he reminds her of Jack.

She smiles back.

“You should come inside and dance,” he tells her, taking half the steps down, waiting for her to meet him halfway.

“I have danced,” she informs him. Lips still smiling, feet firmly planted in the snowy gravel.

“Not with me.” It is an accusation and a joke, it is an insinuation that she’s missing out on the best part of the evening. In most men she would’ve found it obnoxious, but somehow he manages to be both charming and insufferable, and it is a combination she has always found difficult to resist.

“And whose fault is that?” He’s the one who never asked, after all.

He laughs, a billowing sound, the laugh of a man who is easily amused and doesn’t mind showing it. He takes the last six steps as if the dancing has already begun and walks up to her; makes a bow and holds out his hand. “Shall we?”

“I was on my way home,” she insists, still making up her mind.

“You can go home later, home isn’t going anywhere.”

Jack is on a cruise ship off the coast of Africa right now; home is definitely going somewhere. She gives the man an appraising look; up close the similarities fade away. It’s probably for the best.

She raises her hand, but holds it just out of his reach. “Are you a good dancer?”

“I have danced with royalty,” he says, more satire than bragging. Then, after a beat: “And I have five sisters and only one brother.”

She laughs at that and gives him her hand, lets him lead her back inside.

The melody ends just as they reach the dance floor and the band strikes up a waltz. Her mother lost all reason when she was waltzed; Phryne never had much reason to begin with, so she feels safe enough putting her hand on this man’s shoulder and letting him wrap his arm around her waist.

Up close he really is nothing like Jack at all, and she wonders why she ever thought so.

_VII._  
_A joy at first, and then a growing care,_  
_As if a voice within him cried, "Beware!?”_

Dust dances in a strip of sunlight and he watches it, trying to find a pattern in the movements of the particles. There is none, of course, but the exercise occupies his mind, offering a welcome distraction from thoughts that refuse to slow down, crashing into one another in his mind. A chaos he can’t bring back to order, no one idea firm enough to properly grasp. Memories of Europe, sometimes distorted, although mostly he merely wishes they were - that what he remembers did not actually happen.

It seems a lifetime ago; who he is has changed several times over since his return: Soldier, husband, failure. All of that and then none of it as he rebuilt himself, pieces fitting together in a way they never used to, but making up a whole nonetheless, until no-one who hadn’t seen up close who he was before would know that there was a difference. And yet, the closer he gets to Europe, the more he feels the pieces loosening, struggling to break free from their new positions, but no longer fitting where they used to be.

And always in the back of his mind, either the glue holding the pieces together or the chisel trying to break them apart, is Phryne. The memory of her smile, of her voice, of her, is a soothing balm, but it is also another source of unrest, even now that the choice has been made and he is on his way. She knows he is coming, and she wants him to, which should be a comfort, but what will he find when he gets there?

Will she be different now that she has returned to her old life, to all the friends she left behind when she came to Australia? (Australia now left behind as well, but how much of herself with it?) Will she be consumed by this life or will there still be a space for him like there was in Melbourne, where he fit so comfortably in her parlour, sitting by the draughts table or standing by her fireplace, the world outside a mad rush, perhaps, but them comfortable in this room, content with just each other for company?

Will he be the piece that doesn’t quite fit into her life?

He reaches out, runs his fingers through the strip of light, watching as the dust scatters and then strikes a different path, disturbed for only a moment before settling again on its slow passage.

_VIII._  
_Who was, as in a sonnet he had said,_  
_As pure as water, and as good as bread._

Even as it happens, he knows it is a dream. This is not how dreams are meant to work, and in the dream he knows that as well. Although he cannot quite put his finger on what is wrong, he is constantly aware that this is not real, as if even his subconscious is refusing to give him what he wants.

Her smile is just as it has been a hundred times before, teasing and alluring, her eyes sparkling, her lips inviting him closer. Her parlour looks the same as always, familiar furniture, familiar crystal tumblers containing the same familiar whiskey he is used to drinking. Even her dress is one that he recognises, although he cannot exactly place it or pinpoint the day he saw it. He only knows that he knows it and that he likes it.

Perhaps it is the easy way the buttons pop, perhaps it is the way her dress glides to the floor, perhaps it is the way he makes these things happen, without hesitation or worry.

He has had dreams like this before, of course, unbidden images crowding his mind, memories turned into fantasies, expanding beyond reality, that have him waking in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat and feeling guilty, although always suspecting, somehow, that if she knew she wouldn’t necessarily mind, and the only one taking issue with this loss of control is himself.

It is different now, too, however, in the way it is no longer mere fantasy, something conjured up by his mind and then fading away as soon as he can make it (not always soon enough, but always done eventually); now it holds a glimmer of reality, of the future, of expectation.

He is not sure whether that makes it more or less wrong, the assumptions implied by thinking in this way, but in that moment he doesn’t care, is content to let the dream run its course, whether real or not, whether right or wrong. Even though he knows she isn’t there, he lets himself enjoy the softness of her skin, is mesmerised by the contrast between its delicate paleness and his own darker, coarser hands.

He breathes in the scent of perfume he hasn’t smelled in months, inhaling deeply through his nose as his lips taste her skin where shoulder becomes neck. He feels the way her body presses against his, solid and soft, warm even through the layers of clothes he’s somehow still wearing, hears the way she hums, the sound vibrating through him as she stretches to kiss his lips, her fingers working the buttons of his waistcoat.

He knows it’s just a dream, but it feels more like a memory of things that haven’t happened yet.

_IX._  
_Sinking and setting toward the sun._  
_Far off the village clock struck one._

She had not thought, even for a moment, that he would actually come. She had hoped, of course, dreamed and fantasised, entertained herself on that long flight back to England (the geographic distance made even greater by the company) by making plans for things that would never come to be. She did it because it was fun, because she missed him, but mostly just to drown out her father’s snores.

It had been a game.

But now here she stands, waiting for his ship to come in, trying not to be aware of the fact that she looks just like any other woman there, waiting for a man. No one looking at her will see any difference between her and any of them; there is nothing to set them apart. A part of her wants to hold up a sign, to scream at them all that she is Not The Same, but another part of her thinks perhaps she is, at least in this moment.

She is waiting for Jack, the way she has been doing for longer than she has waited for any man before. Generally she’s not inclined towards waiting for a man at all, content to move on to the next thing if one of them should prove not up to the task. It has occurred to her that he might not be worth the wait, at least in the physical sense; that they might somehow be incompatible or he might not be as satisfying a companion in her bed as she has liked to imagine.

(Or not her bed, she thinks, allowing herself a small smile and just the hint of a remembered fantasy as she stands there. She has had plenty of time to think up a variety of scenarios while she waited, after all.)

But the wait has not merely been about taking him to bed, even if that was all she meant to do in the beginning. At some point there was a shift in her intentions, a change so gradual she hardly noticed it herself until it had already happened, and for a while now she has been waiting not just to get him into her boudoir but for him.

She supposes in some ways he has been waiting for her as well, and they’ve spent their time watching each other, waiting for the other to reach some sort of point or conclusion, to both be in the same place at the same time; him free from whatever restraints have held him back, her willing to relinquish some of the freedom that has always been so important to her, until they could meet somewhere in the middle.

She had never expected the middle to mean England, but as people begin to disembark and she finds herself craning her neck, trying to catch a glimpse of him (just as the woman standing right next to her is doing, although presumably she’s not looking for Jack), she decides that the place doesn’t matter, all that matters is that they’re both there and she is done waiting.


	2. Chapter 2

_X._  
_With change of place and change of name,_  
 _Disguised, transformed, and yet the same_

He has fooled himself into believing that once he sees her, his nerves will dissipate and he will feel certain coming here is not a mistake, that she really wants him there, but somehow the opposite happens.

He sees her, and it is like stepping back in time. Too far, not to the field where he said goodbye to her, not to any of those moments in her parlour or her hallway when he was almost not a coward and this could be his chance to right those wrongs, but to the very first moment he realised he wanted her. The very first moment he accepted that truth and right along with it the equal certainty that he would not have her, not in any way that truly mattered.

Standing there on that busy dock, surrounded by strangers, she is radiant. Her attire is more extravagant than anyone else’s, her eyes sparkle more brightly, her lips are more red than he thought anything could be. She is exactly as he remembers her, and all his resolve, both to do and not to do, crumbles on the ground around him as he stops in front of her, his voice trapped somewhere in his gut, his eyes drinking in the sight of her.

“Hello, Jack.” Her smile is familiar and terrifying, a promise and the breaking of it, all in the curl of her lips, in the creases that appear around eyes he could drown in if he let himself.

“Miss Fisher.” He says it dryly, flatly, trying to trap the longing inside him but knowing it escapes through his eyes. The formality is meant to be a joke: that he followed her halfway around the world because she kissed him and asked him to and he still calls her by her last name; it is meant to be a defence, to shield him from the fact that he did; it is meant to put him back on familiar ground in this unfamiliar place.

He wants to lean in and kiss her, wants her in his arms, wants her hands on his chest, in his hair, anywhere, as long as they’re touching him. He wants all this, and so he picks up his suitcase instead and takes a deep breath. “Whereto?”

She smiles, a different smile now, but one he remembers just as well. It is the smile of hasty departures, evenings in her parlour cut short by his desires and his unwillingness to follow through on them. It is the smile of countless times that he failed to act and she let him.

She turns and leads the way, him following two steps behind.

_XI._  
_He who serves well and speaks not, merits more_  
 _Than they who clamor loudest at the door._

She decides that for a week she will be at home to no-one, accept no invitations. Her mother questions this decision, challenges it with the same lack of consequence as she does her husband’s indiscretions, and Phryne tells herself that she is not like him, her motives are good. She senses that throwing Jack onto the scene of London High Society too soon will be a mistake, it will remind him too forcefully of all the reasons he hesitated in the past - at least the ones that were about her, not him.

She expected them to not leave the house at all, too busy doing other things, but he is determined to at least see _something_ of London. She points out that there is plenty of time for seeing, he counters that there is just as much time for _not_ seeing, later.

When he says it his voice is light and teasing, and so she smiles and agrees, because he is right, of course, they have all the time in the world - or at least enough of it to pretend - and so they spend a day making their way from museum to museum and one rainy afternoon visiting the Cenotaph, Jack standing there quiet and thoughtful, her hand finding his, a breath she did not realise she was holding released as his fingers squeeze hers.

The thought strikes her, a treacherous whisper following her from Whitehall to Mayfair, that she wants him more than he wants her, but then the door closes behind them and he is helping her out of her coat, his hands lingering on the skin of her neck as he gently pulls off her scarf, and through the tips of his fingers she feels that longing she knows will be in his eyes if she turns around.

She turns quickly, hoping to catch him in it before he can school his features, retreat back into the role of polite houseguest he seems hell-bent on playing. As she moves, his hand brushes along her collarbone to land on her shoulder, but he doesn’t pull away, and she looks up at him, feeling foolishly hopeful, and like somehow all her years of experience and independence have faded away, useless to her now as she tilts her head back, wanting nothing more than for him to kiss her, feeling more like a fifteen year old stepping out with a boy for the first time than the modern woman she prides herself on being.

She wants to make a joke, tell him he’d better get to it or they’ll both die of old age before he gets to see her lingerie, but he’s skittish as anything and if she startles him she’ll have to wait another year or so before they get anywhere near her boudoir. So she leaves it at a smile, eyebrows raised teasingly, and one hand coming up to rest on the lapel of his jacket. A challenge and an invitation.

This is all familiar ground, they’ve been here countless times before, and it has led to nothing countless times before, but damn it, he never followed her halfway around the world before, and why would he do that just to come here for more of the same?

When his tongue darts out to lick his lips, his eyes making their way back and forth between her eyes and her mouth, she feels her heart speeding up (honestly, why would anyone ever get this worked up over the possibility of simply being kissed?), and then he tilts his head down, moving closer, the hand on her shoulder moving to cup her chin, his thumb caressing her cheek.

He hesitates, his lips mere inches from hers, and she’s not sure if he’s having second thoughts or he’s savouring the moment, but then a door slams at the other end of the house making him jump back, startled, and she wants to bang her head against the wall, or possibly cry at the unfairness of it.

Instead she smiles, although she can tell from both the tension in her cheeks and the look on his face that the grimace is not a convincing one, and then she makes her way to the library, leaving Jack to pick up his nerves and his courage on his own.

_XII._  
_These jewels and pearls and precious stones_  
 _Cannot cure the aches in thy bones_

The stars look out of place in the sky, as if someone took the constellations he is so familiar with and scattered their parts in the night sky at random, making up patterns that would be unfamiliar except he has seen them before, fallen asleep under these stars before, and this, much more that the absence of the Southern Cross, is why the stars look out of place.

Because Cassiopeia and Ursa Major are constellations linked so firmly in his mind with wartime that seeing them now, so far from anything he experienced during the war - tanks and trenches replaced by sportscars and townhouses - confuses his senses, and makes him slightly wary of everything.

_Too_ wary, he knows; too slow to act and too careful when he does, but unable to help it, unwilling to explain it to her. How does he tell her that he came this far, but the last step is too terrifying because it’s the one he fears he won’t be able to untake? He is standing on a precipice and that last step will throw him into an abyss, and he’s not sure she’ll still be there to catch him when he finally reaches the bottom.

A gentle breeze washes over him, and on it a scent he will forever associate with her.

“I thought you were going to wear less of that French perfume the next time you tried to sneak up on me,” he says, eyes still on the stars.

He hears a huff, an annoyed breath being released, and then she’s next to him. “I wasn’t sneaking,” she insists, too close to petulant to be believed.

“Well, for _not_ sneaking you were very quiet.”

She doesn’t reply, positions herself next to him, her shoulder brushing against his arm, and looks up in the same direction as him. Unable to resist the temptation he turns his head and looks at her.

They’ve been here before, gazing at stars, him fumbling over some sort of romantic declaration, and he feels somehow as if he is in that same uncertain place now, even if he knows they’ve moved beyond that. As ever, she is two steps ahead, waiting for him to catch up, and he is tripping over wires that were never there except in his own mind.

The only thing he beat her to, he’s pretty sure, is love, and that doesn’t seem like a victory worth boasting about. All it means is he has further to fall when he jumps.

He shifts, turning back to look at the sky, and their hands brush against each other. Knuckle against knuckle she interlaces her fingers slightly with his, still looking up.

He wonders vaguely whether, if they’re holding hands, they’ll take that step into thin air together.

_XIII._  
_All stains of weakness, and all trace_  
 _Of shame and censure I efface._

Chandeliers sparkle; at the end of a vast dance floor a full band is playing for a crowd to which Phryne Fisher both belongs and doesn’t at all. As Jack looks around the room he wonders if she feels that, too, or if it’s merely his own sense of who she is that makes him think so.

He thinks she is better than this, that she is more than this. But he knows, of course, that very few of these people are actually as shallow as they appear, all of them have stories and secrets, and the only difference is that he _knows_ hers, and this makes her stand out even more than the dress she is wearing, shiny red fabric clinging to her every curve, drawing his eyes to her like a magnet.

Her hand squeezes his forearm, he supposes reassuringly, but the truth is he does not mind being here. He wants to see her in this world, to see for himself what ought to be her natural element, the world she lived in before she wedged her way into his.

A waiter walks past them and they both glance at his empty tray before their eyes meet. Jack removes her hand from his arm, does it so slowly and so gently it might be considered a caress, and then he makes his way to the table holding refreshments.

His back is to her, so he doesn’t see the figure approaching from the opposite direction.

“Phryne Fisher! I can’t believe you’re here.” The voice is loud, enthusiastic, friendly; the accent polished, but somehow studied and unnatural, as if it were adopted late in life. And the speaker is decidedly male.

Jack pulls a face that only the champagne glasses he’s carrying see. He walks over to them - Phryne hugging this long lost friend warmly - doing his damnedest not to notice the man’s hands resting firmly on her waist, an ease and familiarity to it that he doesn’t want to think about.

She pulls back slightly, out of the man’s grasp, as Jack reaches them. When he holds out a champagne glass for her she accepts it. “Jack, this is Tommy Atkins. Tommy, this is Jack Robinson, he’s…” She trails off uncertainly and Jack very determinedly doesn’t react to it. Just reaches out and shakes the other man’s hand, repeating his name to stop her from having to come up with a definition of who he is.

Tommy looks between them as if he’d very much have liked that definition, his handshake just that little bit too firm, revealing his suspicions and rather more insecurity than he’s intending. Jack releases his hand as soon as his manners will allow it, ignores the flash of victory brushing across the other man’s features at this perceived weakness. This is a game Jack has no inclination to play, and if this man thinks some primitive display of male dominance will win him any favours with Phryne then he has already lost.

She seems completely oblivious, however, and Jack wonders if she’s still stuck on that sentence she never managed to complete, distracted to the point that she seems reluctant to start a new one.

He sips his champagne, determinedly not bothered by the silence that stretches on, but when the band strikes up a waltz he looks at Phryne, eyebrows raised in question, and she smiles, an answer and a shared history, and any soreness lingering in his right hand vanishes at the sight of it. When she drinks her champagne in one and hands the empty coupe to Tommy, Jack swallows a smirk with the rest of his own drink before handing over his empty glass as well and then he holds out his hand to her.

She takes it and he leads her onto the dance floor, her body melting into his for a second before straightening, her breath warm and soft on the exposed skin of his neck.

“Slow and close, Jack?” she whispers in his ear, head tilted up, and he smiles, unable to ignore Tommy Atkins’ eyes on them, but refusing to acknowledge the other man’s gaze.

He leans down and whispers back, his right hand dipping just slightly lower, to the very edge of decorum. “As always.”

They move around the dance floor, apparently the one place where she bends to convention and allows him to lead, and he’s remembering the only other time they’ve danced; a run down hotel in the middle of the afternoon, everything very serious and stiff. Their surroundings now are infinitely more formal, and yet they are somehow much more relaxed, although every move is still executed with precision.

“I know him from the war,” she says suddenly, and it takes him a moment to realise who she means. Tommy Atkins was out of his mind the instant he was out of his line of sight.

“I don’t need to know,” he replies, his voice low but firm.

She pulls back slightly to look at him, body and feet still moving with the music, her eyes searching his face. He smiles slightly, willing her to understand. He knows who she is, he knows what her life is and has been, and while he doesn’t have any issues with her past, he also feels that the less he knows about certain aspects of it the better.

The hand resting on his shoulder moves up to rest against his cheek, the touch featherlight. “The war was a long time ago.”

“Yes, it was,” he agrees, leaning into the touch slightly, unable to help himself and struggling to remember why he should.

Somehow they are at the edge of the dance floor, and their feet have stopped moving, her hand still on his face, her thumb brushing his cheekbone. They are in public, he should let go of her, but instead the thumb of his right hand is drawing a similar pattern on her back, and his left hand is still holding her right one, although closer to his body now.

The band continues to play and all around them people are talking, and his neck is aching from the strain of not leaning down to kiss her. Her eyes keep straying to his lips and the suggestion that her mind is on a similar path makes the struggle even harder, but he knows it will be the beginning of something they can’t finish.

At least not here. “How long do these affairs usually last?”

Her eyes widen in surprise, and he feels a rush of panic, wondering if that question posed in this moment was too forward, even if he knows that idea is ridiculous, but then she smiles, delight shining in her eyes. “Oh, they can easily drag on for half the night,” she says, her tone slightly teasing, her body already halfway to movement, aiming for the door, her free hand falling to her side.

“Ah.” He leans back on his heels, his grip on her loosening at last. “Perhaps another drink then.”

She moves forward, her body so close he can feel the heat radiating from it but not quite touching him. “I doubt that anyone will notice if we leave right now,” she says, her lips so close to his ear they actually brush against his earlobe on the ‘o’ in notice.

He’s quite sure she’s wrong about that, and he’s equally sure she knows she is as well. He appreciates the effort she makes to put him at ease, unnecessary though it might be.

_XIV._  
_Unseen behind them sank the sun,_  
 _But flushed each snowy peak_  
 _A little while with rosy light_  
 _That faded slowly from the sight_  
 _As blushes from the cheek._

She drags him from the party with a speed that leaves quite a bit of her dignity behind them, and then she spends the whole trip home willing him to not change his mind, willing the house to be empty, willing the lights not to flicker at the wrong moment, and then she lets them in the front door, her whole body pushing it closed behind them, the lock clicking into place with something like finality.

She leans against the hardwood, watching him intently as he shrugs off his coat and hangs it on the same hook he took it from earlier that evening and discarding her own cape at the same time with rather less care. When he’s done he turns to look at her, smoothing down the front of his dinner jacket as if it won’t be gone in a minute, or maybe as if he knows exactly that that’s what will happen, and she smiles at him, holding out a hand to draw him closer.

He approaches slowly, and reaches for her outstretched hand, but instead of taking it, he trails a path from the tips of her fingers and up her arm until he reaches her shoulder, his eyes on hers the whole time.

She shivers, excitement and anticipation and a flutter in her stomach at his touch and the way he looks at her. He is in control of himself, but hanging onto it by a thread, and at first she is so fascinated just watching him that she almost forgets to participate. Only when he pauses, fingers lingering on her exposed shoulder, does she realise that he’s waiting for a signal from her, and her stillness might be interpreted as hesitance or reluctance.

Still leaning back against the door, she reaches up to tug on his tie, pulling him closer. He moves in small bursts, as if he’s resisting and then surrendering little by little, until he’s so close she can feel his warm exhale on her face. She lets go of his tie, traces his jawline with her finger, and feels his breathing speed up. She smiles, at the same time amused and pleased by his reaction to her, to them just standing here, but then he leans in and kisses her, feathersoft and not enough at all, so when he pulls back she follows him, insisting on deepening the kiss, refusing to let him settle for a goodnight peck and then walk away.

If he doesn’t want her, then he’ll have to say so, and he’ll have to say it without looking at her like she’s the first sunrise he has seen after years spent underground. That thought has only just formed in her head when he pulls away again, his hands on her shoulder holding her back, and for half a second she thinks he _did_ say it, but then his head turns and looks at the stairs leading up to the bedrooms before turning back to her.

She smiles, and with a bravado she is mostly faking, she grabs hold of his tie again and pulls him upstairs.

_XV._  
_For though not given to weakness, he could feel_  
 _The pain of wounds, that ache because they heal._

The first time he wakes up in her bed he is confused, unused to the weight of another body against his own. It takes a minute to remember, reality catching up with him slowly, but when he does he feels a smile spreading on his face.

She is still sleeping soundly, lying on her stomach with one leg thrown over his, her hand resting on his chest as if she’s feeling for a heartbeat. Her head is turned towards him and he shifts slightly, stretching so he can brush the hair out of her face and look at her.

She seems completely relaxed, her face somehow different like this, unguarded. Different, but the same, just as the Phryne he knows now is different but the same as the one he knew a day ago. He trails a slow path along her hairline and down her cheek, remembering what it felt like to kiss that same skin, how it tasted both before and after beads of sweat had spread there. Already he’s building a catalogue in his mind of her body and its reactions to his touch, his mind determined to store as much information as possible.

That’s almost certainly a bad idea, he thinks, his finger tracing the shape of her mouth, it will only let him get too used to her too soon. But for now he can’t help it, too exhausted after fighting himself for so long to start another battle again immediately, and so he decides that these are things he can deal with later.

For now just the fact that he is here, in her bed, is enough to have to process. As inevitable as it seems to have been, looking back from where they are now, there’s still a part of him that thinks it’s impossible, that it can never happen, in spite of the fact that it already has. This is the same part of his mind that wants both to remember and forget every curve of her body; remember it so he can relive this moment after she is gone from his life, forget so he won’t have to.

But whatever he’ll find himself wishing he had done in the future, this catalogue is not entirely useless, he thinks, when his hand moves down her neck, brushing gently over a spot that makes her shiver even in her sleep just as it did last night when she was awake. He moves, presses his lips to that same spot, a kiss to wake her up.

_XVI._  
_Deep distress and hesitation_  
 _Mingled with his adoration;__  
 _Should he go, or should he stay?_  
 _Should he leave the poor to wait_  
 _Hungry at the convent gate,_  
 _Till the Vision passed away?_

As the days go by she begins to feel trapped, caught in this prison she has built for herself, and although none of it is his fault, she can feel herself beginning to resent him for it, simply because he bears it so much better. She made him come, she dragged him into this world and now they are stuck here, as if they’re in a house of mirrors and cannot find the exit, and she is rushing from room to room searching for a way out while he merely stands there, reflected over and over everywhere around her, calmly watching as her panic mounts, waiting for it to abate.

The truth is, of course, that the only reason she can stand it at all is him. But if he had not been there, a fixed presence, a part of what her life is when it isn’t _this_ , she would have fought so much harder against the ties that bind her, and somehow, in some perverted way, this makes him one of those ties. Without him, she would have broken free.

But he is there at the end of the day, his chest a pillow to rest her head on, his hands easing the tension in her muscles simply by touching her, and so her will to fight against the daytime wanes. He makes her weaker, because there is less reason for her to be strong.

Some days she wishes he would speak up, voice his opinion on this world she has thrown him into, let her see some of the disdain she knows he must be feeling for the frivolity and waste they’re surrounded by. If only he would question the way her friends spend their days, the shallow matters that fill their minds, then she would find the words to defend them - or to disown them, and then perhaps she would be free of them.

Instead he smiles and nods and puts up with; doesn’t join in their conversations unless pulled into one, but appears content enough just standing on the edge of things, observing her in this changed setting; and it unsettles her, the extent of his acceptance of her and her world. She tries to taunt him, lure him into a trap, but he refuses to be led, maintaining a distance that only disappears when they are in her bed.

In public he is the same Jack Robinson he always was, restrained and proper, somehow managing to be charming and witty without really seeming to try. She has had to field questions about him from unmarried female friends; who exactly is this man, why is he there, would she mind if they…? And she wants to tell them no, he is mine and you can’t have him, but the words won’t leave her mouth and so instead she smiles and shrugs, tells them they’re welcome to try.

Then she brushes against him just a little too closely as she makes her way from one group of friends to another, laughs just a little too loudly at a joke someone makes, and when she turns around he is smiling briefly at her, politely talking to whichever young lady has her claws in him that evening.

And the truth is she _does_ mind, and she hates herself for it, because she feels that there is nothing she could ever have the right to say to stop him from going with any of them if he wanted, and it is the closest she has ever been to regretting who she is. But when the parties wind down, somehow he is always by her side, alone, not quite waiting for her but always there, and when she smiles at him he smiles back, and then they leave together only to return another night and do it all over again.

_XVII._  
_Ah me! he turns away and sighs;_  
 _There is a mist before his eyes._

She is restless, and it puts him on edge. It feels as if she is constantly on the brink of saying something, of doing something, of changing what they are, and he has no idea which direction they’ll move next. He does his best to give her the space he thinks she must crave, to not be constantly crowding her, demanding her attention and her smiles.

At parties she will all but ignore him, flirt with him in a way that is comforting in its familiarity, the London equivalent of sitting on his desk with her skirt riding up her thigh, and then she’ll throw her friends at him, women who bat their eyelashes and smile at every single thing he says (as if they don’t realise that the salary of a detective inspector, while enough to live comfortably on, will not support the lifestyle to which they are accustomed) and he does his best to be polite as he tries to figure out what they’re doing it for and how it is he’s expected to respond.

So far she has made no comment on it, beyond a single question the first time it happened, about the woman’s brother, to which he gave an answer that was as vague as the question, sure that there was some double meaning there but for once not quite able to grasp it.

Does she expect him to flirt with these women? To do more than that? He wants to ask her if these are the terms on which she has decided: He must share her with the world, and so _he_ must be shared as well. If that’s the case, he thinks to himself wryly, perhaps they should have a conversation about how taste is subjective and when it comes to women theirs are clearly different.

But the truth is, he doesn’t _want_ to be shared, and the question of who she’d be sharing him with is not really relevant. She could line up a parade of women to his exact specifications (if he had to come up with something, he supposes he could supply her with a list of features or characteristics that he’d prefer over others, for reasons of aesthetics if nothing else) and the odds are he still wouldn’t spare more than polite attention on them. If that is what she wants him to do, however, then he can see no reason to object to it, and so far she hasn’t demanded more of him than that he entertain them for an evening while she watches from across the room.

Perhaps he is a pupil, being taught the ways of her world, but if so he is a slow learner, and he has no real inclination to improve until forced into a corner. Even then he wonders if he would be willing to, or if this will become a bone of contention between them in a way that he has never let _her_ tendencies in that area be one. ( _Hardly_ ever, that one occasion on which alcohol loosened his lips rather more than any of them expected or wanted.)

He meant it when he told her that he would never ask her to change, but would he be willing to, if she asked it of him?

_XVIII._  
_A sudden wind from out the west_  
 _Blew all its trumpets loud and shrill;_  
 _The windows rattled with the blast,_  
 _The oak-trees shouted as it passed,_  
 _And straight, as if by fear possessed,_  
 _The cloud encampment on the hill_  
 _Broke up, and fluttering flag and tent_  
 _Vanished into the firmament,_  
 _And down the valley fled amain_  
 _The rear of the retreating rain._

She is driving, fast, doing the one thing she knows he hates the most. The one thing he admitted to hating, at least. It is a button she should not push, perhaps, but desperation makes her foot on the accelerator heavier than it needs to be and the satisfaction it gives her is worth any consequences that may follow. (It is the consequences she wants, after all, whatever they may be. She just wants _something_.)

He is quiet in the passenger seat, eyes looking at but not seeing the landscape flying by. She wonders if he even knows why they’re in the car, where they’re going. Why she’s upset.

Except she’s not upset, she’s fine. There is nothing wrong, he has done nothing wrong. But still everything just _is_ wrong. Whatever game they’re playing, she has had enough of it, but she doesn’t know the rules and so she doesn’t know how to make it stop.

Is she meant to give in? Should she admit defeat? Should she ask him to explain what they’re doing and how long it will last? These are things she is not willing to do, questions she is not willing to ask, because although she wants the _game_ to be over, she is not yet prepared for _them_ to be. That is a defeat she is not ready to suffer.

And so instead she pushes and pokes at him, from this angle and that, trying to find a weak spot and a way to wedge herself into his mind. He is an open book, in some ways, wearing the feelings he won’t speak in his eyes when he looks at her and on his lips when he kisses her, in the way his hands wander when he is alone with her; but it feels as if she’s only allowed to read the first three chapters, never quite getting to where the story actually begins.

Poking doesn’t work, of course, he is as stubborn in this as he ever was in resisting her advances back in Melbourne, but at least there is some hope in that comparison, because back then he resisted until he didn’t, and perhaps the same will happen now. Maybe it is simply a matter of time, and she can wait him out. She was never good at being patient, but he has taught her how to be, in some things.

Her eyes drift from the road, taking in his profile as he continues to stare out the window. His jaw is set, and she knows he’s tempted to say something, but when she speeds up just slightly more he closes his eyes against the world slipping by, his breathing deep and even and determined.

She stops the car. They’re in the middle of a forest, miles yet from the Danvers estate and the weekend long party they’re meant to be at. “Let’s go to Paris.” (He has taught her patience in _some_ things.)

He looks at her, surprised, and when she smiles he smiles back. “All right.”


	3. Chapter 3

_XIX._  
_Like, and yet not the same, may seem_  
_The vision of my waking dream._

She suggests flying first, he assumes as a dare, or a tease, or something meant to goad him in some way, but as usual (it feels ‘usual’ by now, although it never did before, this continent bringing them together and pulling them apart at the same time) he does not quite know what it is she’s trying to draw out of him, and so he gives only the slightest of reactions: a brief shake of the head, an amused smile and an, “Absolutely not, Miss Fisher.”

Absurdly, this seems to satisfy her, and she settles instead on a scheme that gets them there by train and ship at a pace that has her drumming her fingers impatiently against tables, but even as she does it she smiles at him, as if - whatever the pace - she’s glad to be finally underway.

When she first suggests the trip he assumes they will go there for a week or two, take in the sights and try to forget the last time they were there before returning to London, but she packs with a determination and care that soon makes it clear that she has a very different plan in mind.

He attempts a conversation the evening before they leave, limbs tangled in messy sheets, his fingers drawing lazy patterns along her ribcage, and him questioning her intentions, but the look she gives him is so sharp and so probing that when she makes a joke (at least he assumes it’s a joke) about ‘intentions’, he drops it. He knows he shouldn’t, that he ought to force the issue, and even if she’s determined to get through the conversation on a path paved with flippancy and witty retorts, it is a conversation they need to have.

But every time he tries he is held back by the fact that they are so very different and they see what they’re doing in such different lights; that if he ever truly let her see what he wants - what he’d want if he thought there was any way he could have it without her having to give up the part of her that makes her _her_ \- then she would suddenly see those differences, too, and that would be the end of this.

The end is something he’s not ready for - he told himself that losing her could only ever become more painful and now he knows he was right - and so he goes along with her scheme, whatever it is, the curtains drawn on their compartment, passing the time in ways that leave little room for conversations neither of them is willing to start.

_XX._  
_And in a whisper to the king he said:_  
_"What is yon shape, that, pallid as the dead,_  
_Is watching me, as if he sought to trace_  
_In the dim light the features of my face?"_

When they first arrive she sees ghosts around every corner. It doesn’t last, and she knows that it won’t, but she spends a couple of days revisiting post-war Paris in her mind, remembering things she would have rather left forgotten.

In some ways she hates who she was back then, who René turned her into, but in other ways she is grateful, because who she was then helped shape who she is now.

Although she does her best to hide it, she knows Jack senses her weakness, the fear of shadows there is no one to cast, but when she doesn’t mention it, neither does he. She worries in the beginning that he is misunderstanding, that he thinks her sudden silence is about him, but then one afternoon as they walk along the Seine she finds herself pointing out a bridge and telling him a story about Sarcelle, how he almost got into an altercation with another painter over easel positioning. When she falters near the end of it, remembering how René had laughed and said he “should just have thrown the other man’s easel in the river, but why would anyone want to paint cityscapes, anyway?” Jack reaches up a hand to gently brush a stray lock of hair (that in all honesty probably had never strayed) back into place, and then he leans in to kiss her, slowly, thoroughly, until instead of René in Paris she is remembering René in Melbourne and how the last time she saw him alive was the first time Jack kissed her.

She imagines Jack would say that that kiss doesn’t count, he did it to distract her and never had any amorous intentions, and as much as she enjoyed teasing him about it later, she knows that’s true.

It is strange to her that he should use the same method of distraction now, but even more so how different its effect is. Back then, Jack Robinson - with his estranged wife and firm belief that a marriage is still a marriage - kissing her had been shocking and unexpected, something she wished later that she had been in a state to enjoy more, rather than something she just responded to as a matter of reflex. Nowhis kiss holds comfort and the knowledge that he is there should she decide that she needs that comfort, but somehow the knowledge lessens the need.

This is why she is able to pull back, one hand resting on his cheek, and smile. Able to turn away from him and finally see the way the sunlight shimmers on the water, the way the new buds on the trees are so brightly green they’re practically radiant, the way people around them are smiling and laughing, going about their day without a care in the world, and not feel as if all these things are happening separately from her, but in the same world she inhabits.

She is in this world, she is a part of it, and he is a part of it with her.

_XXI._  
_And Olger answered: "When he shall appear,_  
_You will behold what manner of man he is;_  
_But what will then befall us I know not."_

Paris is freedom like none he has ever felt. It is a France so different from the one he remembers, the France of trenches, gunfire and mud; death everywhere, overpowering every one of his senses.

Paris now is alive and vibrant, sounds and colours that seem almost designed to dispel those memories, to rid the city of the gloom the country lived through. That they all lived through.

He gives himself up to it much more easily than he should - much more easily, he knows, than she expected him to.

They talk or walk or dance their way through the days, fuck their way through the nights, and there is nothing else in his mind except this moment, right now, until it is replaced by the next one, discarded with the same carelessness as her lingerie, left for someone else to deal with in the morning.

He is living, finally, the way she always seems to have done, the way she has been pushing him to do simply by existing, and it is exhilarating and terrifying in equal quantities. It doesn’t seem right to him, somehow, that anyone should enjoy life this much, in such a physical way, and he hears the occasional whisper, reality trying to make its way into this cocoon he has built around them, warning him about the dangers of the choices he is making, but he drowns it out by making her moan, by making her scream his name in pleasure, _that_ sound what rings in his ear as sleep overtakes him.

_XXII._  
_How can I tell the signals and the signs_  
_By which one heart another heart divines?_  
_How can I tell the many thousand ways_  
_By which it keeps the secret it betrays?_

Sometimes he studies her body as if it is a mystery he needs to solve, or as if _she_ is a mystery he cannot find his way to the bottom of; at other times she is a work of art to be admired or an altar at which he worships. It should make her uncomfortable, being his sole focus in this way; it should terrify her just how much it doesn’t terrify her, but all she can do is bask in the glow of it and wonder when she’ll grow bored of that feeling.

She suspects the answer to that question is, “Never,” and while this realisation gives her pause, the pause is a short one, that particular train of thought easily derailed by the path his lips draw up the inside of her thigh. 

By the way his hands know her body, know where to push and where to pull, where to be gentle and where to be firm; how quickly he seems to have mapped all of her, her every reaction to his touch memorised and indexed, all these things he knows about her now and can make happen at will.

By the way his body feels; the weight of it as he looms over her; where their skin touches and where the cool air of the room drifts between them, making those parts of her crave his touch, her arms reaching up to pull him closer; the curve of him as he sleeps, their bodies folded together, or him on his back, her head on his shoulder or chest. (She never used to sleep like this, close. Intimacy has always been for the waking hours, sleep was a solitary thing, a world that excluded everyone else.)

By the way he looks at her, his eyes drilling into hers, searching for something she doesn’t know if he’ll find although she knows it’s there to be found; or making their way down her body as he undresses her slowly, seeing each inch of exposed skin as if for the first time - or perhaps as if for the last; or searching her face in the moment of release, her pleasure feeding his.

By the way he makes her feel, doing these things. How she knows, when he touches her, rests against her, looks at her, that this is enough, and if she can have him, there’s nothing else she needs.

It is a train of thought easily derailed, and she finds that she doesn’t mind. There are worse things in the world, as it turns out, than to be loved.

_XXIII._  
_Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,_  
_Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;_  
_So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,_  
_Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence._

There are things he will say that will hurt her. There are things he will say that will heal her.

There are things she will do that will break his heart. There are things she will do that will heal it.

They know it, both of them, although they don’t know the words or the deeds, can’t imagine what will come. Can’t imagine being anything other than what they are now, entwined, so close they are each other’s whole view, the curve of her spine his horizon, the ridges of his abs a mountain range her fingers trail across.

She is on fire and his touch fans the flame that burns inside her. She loves him, but she doesn’t tell him, the fire of her love consuming her instead, and she strips naked to cool her overheating skin, leaving more of her exposed to his touch, the flame growing ever higher. He is gentle, fanning the fire calmly, or he is rough, strong bursts of air making flames shoot up, and always he is there, and she is burning up. 

He is a beach and she is the ocean that flows over him. He loves her, but he doesn’t tell her, content to let her cool waters wash over him, smoothing his edges, shaping him, taking grains of him with her and bringing others to the shore, ebb and flow. She is calm, water flowing gently back and forth, or she is stormful, foamy waves rolling over him, and always he is there, still and waiting, the erosion so slow it goes unnoticed.

They are entwined, too close to see the flames and the pebbles, too close for a collision, but she is burning up and she is his ocean, cooling him, and there are things she will do and words he will say, and it is inevitable. 

_XXIV._  
_"When simple kindness is misunderstood_  
_A little flagellation may do good."_

Jack leans back in his seat, watches as Phryne dazzles the owner of the small pavement café with her charm and her French, lips curling around vowels in a way Jack finds entirely too adorable, even after six weeks of listening to it. When the man walks away he smiles at Jack, and Jack returns the smile easily before turning to Phryne.

“Do you know,” she says, adjusting her sunglasses. “I rather think that man wants to sleep with me.”

Jack raises his eyebrows in response; he rather thinks so, too.

A year ago the very idea would have filled him with dread, but now it seems ridiculous that this man in his late fifties, who has clearly spent the last decade eating every leftover from his café, and not a whole lot of that time bathing, should be a rival in the way that _every_ man used to be. (The main difference being, of course, that back then he couldn’t erase visions of her in the arms of other men with actual memories of her nails scraping the outline of his muscles, the exact sound she makes when she comes. He can do both those things now. And he does, not infrequently.)

“He was really very charming,” Phryne persists.

“Hmm.” Jack could smell his garlic breath from all the way across the table.

“He suggested a visit to the Eiffel Tower.” She’s smirking now, very nearly unable to keep a straight face.

“I heard.” They’ve been up the Eiffel Tower twice; on the first visit she found the experience so underwhelming, nothing at all like she remembered, that she felt forced to try again, just to be sure _he_ had enjoyed himself.

“Said it was _very_ romantic.”

“I was sitting right here the whole time, Miss Fisher.”

Her eyes narrow, faux offense concealing amusement. “And it didn’t occur to you to say anything?”

He shrugs. “You seemed to get on perfectly well on your own. And I think it’s been established already that your French is better than mine.”

She pauses at that; accepts the compliment, even if it wasn’t one. It’s a simple fact, after all. His French vocabulary runs more along the military lines, hers along the social. Art and romance. _And_ military, of course. Wartime nurse, she probably knows more about shrapnel wounds than he does as well, even if they’ve both seen their fair share.

“I didn’t think you’d appreciate my interference. You’re a modern woman, after all, capable of making her own decisions.” He smiles, pats his jacket pocket. “Besides, I have the key to the hotel room.”

She laughs at that. “I’m sure Monsieur Clement would be willing to let me spend the night after our visit to the tower.”

Jack turns his head, looks at the windows above the café where Monsieur Clement has his private quarters - a fact he knows because the man pointed it out to Phryne himself not five minutes ago. The entire apartment could probably fit in their suite at the Hotel Ritz twice.

“I’ve had worse,” she insists and he snorts. Her nose wrinkles, her lips curled upwards. “I meant sleeping quarters.”

“I’m sure you did,” he agrees, stretching slightly to observe Clement through the café window, his eyes landing on the man just as he scratches his backside thoroughly.

“Do you know what?” she asks, getting out of her seat and sidling into his lap. “I don’t think Europe agrees with you at all.”

He wraps his arms around her waist, his hands grasping each other and resting against her hip. “No?”

“No.” She leans in slightly, kisses his forehead. “Being here has made you entirely too…” She trails off, searching for the right way to describe his attitude.

“Charming?” he suggests. “Witty? Debonair?”

“Insufferable.”

His hands shift, pushing her into him, and he catches her lips in a kiss. “I learned from the best.”

She shakes her head, their noses brushing against each other. “I don’t know if he’d be interested in you, but I can ask, if you’d like.”

“He’s not really my type,” Jack says lightly, his thumbs drawing lazy circles on her hip.

“Oh? You have a type?”

Jack looks past her, at a woman wearing a dress that looks like it might pass for lingerie back home. “Blondes,” he says, nodding slightly, as if this is something he has thought about for more than two seconds and his actual type isn’t described perfectly with the words ‘Phryne Fisher’.

Phryne’s head turns, her gaze following his and landing on the same woman, her golden hair trailing behind her as she walks, her high-heeled shoes navigating the cobblestone street with a confidence Jack can only marvel at.

She shifts in his lap, and he smiles into her hair, kissing the back of her head lightly. She leans into the kiss, turning her head until their lips meet.

“Very attractive,” she agrees, her lips moving against his, her arms wrapped tightly around his neck.

Jack smiles at her false bravado, deepening the kiss and wondering if he should be feeling guilty about poking her with this particular stick, but the truth is she started it, flirting up a storm with the café owner - and either way the blonde woman is already out of sight, having turned the corner and disappeared from their lives forever, a fact that bothers him not at all.

And the idea that he has the power to make Phryne Fisher feel jealous, even if just for a second, is one that he enjoys far more than he probably should, simply because it takes the sting out of all those nights he spent pondering… Well, there was a time she had the power to make him feel very jealous, as well, and for much more than just a few seconds.

“We should go back to the hotel,” he says, breath hitched, when her hand snakes its way under his jacket, and she starts tugging at his shirt. If they had been in Melbourne doing this in public he would’ve had to arrest himself for public indecency.

She bites into his bottom lip lightly. “No. I want to go shopping.”

He sighs softly, mentally steeling himself for a punishment that feels completely disproportionate to his crime. 

**__**_XXV._  
_In the middle of the night,_  
_In a halt of the hurrying flight,_

They are everything she never knew she wanted and some days she just wants to scream.

They are perfect together; she knows when he needs to be pushed, all the ways to touch him to make him come apart; he knows where to kiss, where to nibble, where to bite; and she understands better than ever why the French call it _la petite mort_ , because every time she dies a little. It is a beautiful death, and if it were how she actually went she could ask for nothing else from the world. But after dying, somehow, perversely, comes living, and with every death _they_ die a little.

She hardly notices it at first, and when she finally does, she dismisses it: She is imagining things, it is only her own fear of intimacy, of stability, of permanence, playing tricks on her; but the more she looks, the more she sees.

Then it begins to feel as if they have been given only a finite amount of happiness, enough to last a lifetime normally, but they are burning it up too quickly. She spent all that time worrying about ‘forever’, about what he wanted and what she was willing to give and the ocean between the two, but as it turns out ‘forever’ is not that long, because soon they will both be gone, the cracks in the veneer of both of them growing larger and larger until their very essence seeps out completely and vanishes, leaving only hollow shells behind to go about their day as if everything is normal.

She can see a change in him already, and she has no doubt that he sees it in her as well, the way his eyes will linger on her, sometimes, as if he’s trying to remember who she is and why they are there. Every day he is a little bit less Jack, a little bit less the man she knows so well and never told she loves. She doesn’t love him less because of it, but there is less of him to love.

She comes to think that it is Paris. That the city brings out this new Jack, this creature that captures and fascinates her at first, but then one morning - the breakfast tray nearly sliding off the bed, her saving it in the nick of time and discarding it on the floor along with a half-eaten croissant, his hands playing with the belt of her robe, his lips trailing along her hipbone as she falls back against the pillows - she sees the truth: This isn’t a Jack who has been lying in wait somewhere, waiting to be drawn out (waiting for _her_ to draw him out). This is the real Jack vanishing to be replaced by something else, a distorted reflection of herself.

This Jack is carefree and careless, living every day as if it might be his last, and as the days go by she begins to wish that it will be - that the real Jack will come back, _her_ Jack. Because the old Jack was hers, whether she wanted him to be or not - and oh, does she know now that she wants him to be - but this Jack belongs to no-one, he belongs only to the here and now.

But his here and now is too big, too unrelenting, and it’s swallowing her whole, and she wonders if this is how he used to feel, like he was burning up just orbiting around her.

The universe may be expanding, but now somehow they are too close.

_XXVI._  
_She took from them the great waxlight;_  
_"Now ye shall lie in the dark at night."_

They are shouting; angry lips forming words that cannot be taken back once they escape. Narrow eyes staring daggers, cutting open wounds to ease the words under their skin.

He laughs, a cold, hollow sound, possibly the most supercilious she has ever seen him. In that moment, she thinks she might hate him, but she _knows_ that she loves him, which makes it worse.

She throws a shoe at him. He wore it to the jazz club last night, an exclamation mark to finish off the accusation she just made. In _this_ moment, she hates _herself_. Hates what she has become; what he has turned her into: this jealous, bitter woman, who throws things at the man who let her walk home alone.

In this moment, she is everything she despises. The weakness she saw in her mother, that she sees everywhere in women who let themselves love men not worthy of that love, because no man can be, when that love comes with a requirement to submit to and put up with.

Except Jack has required none of those things of her. All Jack has done is live by the set of directions she has drawn up for him, followed the rules of a game she showed him how to play. All he has done is play it better, his only fault not realising that she stopped playing a long time ago.

And then he throws it right back in her face: “I thought you hadn’t taken anything seriously since 1918?”

Tears burn behind her eyelids, threatening to fall, and she knows that would be the worst punishment she could dole out: To let him see that he hurt her. But it is a weakness she won’t allow him to see, even if that weakness would win the hand for her, and so she breathes in deeply, collects herself. “And I thought you were a serious man?”

His jaw is set, his cheekbones standing out so clearly she thinks if she touched him she might actually cut herself. “Okay, then let’s be serious. Is that really what you want?”

“It is,” she tells him, her voice equally cold, although there’s something in his eyes that makes her think she could change her mind about that very quickly.

“So,” he says, his words still laced with venom. “Where do you want to start?”

Unbidden, her eyes flash to the bed behind him and he snorts as if she’s behaving exactly the way he’s expecting her to, and she wants to tell him he’s wrong, but she doesn’t know how to, and she doesn’t think he’d believe her even if she did find the words. “What happened?” she asks instead, not sure if she means last night or to the two of them.

He sighs, his shoulders sagging like a balloon that’s slowly deflating, all the air and energy leaving his body. Somehow the resignation is worse than the anger was, because at least the anger she can match with her own, and she looks at the floor to save herself from having to look at him.

“What do you want me to tell you, Phryne? What is it that you want to hear?”

She shrugs, not sure if he’s looking at her or not. Not sure what it is she wants to hear. She wants to tell him “The truth,” but doesn’t trust herself to. Does she _really_ want to know? Is actually knowing better than suspecting? Better than imagining things she can tell herself are only in her head, that never happened?

She closes her eyes, remembering what _did_ happen, how easily he laughed when the other woman spoke, how utterly charmed she looked when he told her he had seen her before, days ago, as she walked past a café across the street, before asking her to dance, his arms wrapped around her as they moved, her long blonde hair swishing from side to side along to the music, matching the rhythm of their bodies.

How he didn’t look Phryne’s way at all, even when she struck up a conversation with a mustachioed Englishman who bought her a drink, or when she dragged that man onto the dance floor with her, her smile as wide as Jack’s, her laughter as loud.

How he didn’t even notice when she left, alone.

“Did you sleep with her?” she asks, finally, deciding she has to know at least that much.

“Phryne,” he says, his voice half-warning, half-pleading.

She looks up at him. His arms are at his sides, his hands completely still, and he looks guarded and closed off, closer to the Jack she knows than he has been for weeks.

“You left,” he tells her. “What was I supposed to do?”

The question is meant to be evasive, maybe, but its meaning is clear enough to her and she feels as if he slapped her, the words hitting her harder than she expected them to. He could’ve followed her, he could’ve taken a taxi, he could’ve done so many things that weren’t sleeping with someone else (although, of course, there’s no reason at all why he couldn’t do exactly what he did). 

“Do whatever you like, Jack,” she all but shouts at him, turning on her heels and leaving the room before he can say anything else.

_XXVII._  
_He had a way of saying things_  
_That made one think of courts and kings_

Outside darkness has already fallen. A fire has been lit (a maid turning up as the sun set with a beauty that seemed to taunt him beyond the rooftops visible from the balcony, going about her business with hurried hands and then scurrying out, giving him a nervous look that had him confused until he caught a glimpse of his own face in the mirror in the lavatory half an hour later) and Jack is seated by it in an armchair not quite comfortable enough, sipping from a glass of whiskey that doesn’t taste quite right.

He has not seen or heard from Phryne since she left and although he has tried, he can’t help but be worried about her. He tried anger first, but found it too difficult to maintain, or at least he found it difficult to be angry with anyone other than himself, which did nothing to ease the nagging feeling in the back of his mind that something terrible is about to happen.

And so he fell back on whiskey, meaning to drown his worries in amber liquid, but the taste of it is too bitter on his tongue, his throat too tight to let the alcohol pass.

He wonders vaguely - finally a hint of resentment around the edges of his thoughts - if he’ll hear from her after she has settled in some other place, a message via the hotel manager to let him know the bill has been settled and he should feel free to stay until the end of the month at his leisure, she’s too busy enjoying the Riviera to care whether he goes or stays. But that’s unfair, of course, and he knows it, and that’s why his anger is fleeting while the worry is a constant.

She left him in that club, and he still doesn’t understand why, but once is hardly a habit, and he doesn’t see her making one of it. For all the times he tried to get rid of her in the past - mostly swatting at a buzzing fly early on, but just once a sincere effort for the sake of his peace of mind - she never left for long and he can’t imagine that she would now.

Except he can, and it is a desert spring, giving life to an unease he has refused to let grow until now.

It should be unimaginable, but the price of not holding on to things is that they might disappear at any moment and his worry, like his anger, is for himself more than it is for her: what if she leaves him now, finally floats away, not just out of reach but out of sight?

He will not grasp for her, he will not hold on, but he cannot bear the thought of her not being there at all.

**__**_XXVIII._  
_And still, reluctant to retire,_  
_The friends sat talking by the fire_  
_And watched the smouldering embers burn_  
_To ashes, and flash up again_  
_Into a momentary glow,_  
_Lingering like them when forced to go,_  
_And going when they would remain;_  
_For on the morrow they must turn_  
_Their faces homeward, and the pain_  
_Of parting touched with its unrest_  
_A tender nerve in every breast._

She walks in the door, quietly, and had he not been looking in that direction he wouldn’t have noticed her at all, at first. Her eyes are on him, searching, worried, sad, and he feels his heart contracting in his chest, a pain he knows is emotional but so strong it feels physical.

He opens his mouth to speak but she shakes her head so he closes it again.

“You didn’t, did you?” she asks, picking up the conversation she cut short more than ten hours ago.

He sighs, watching her as she watches him, like she is a wary animal trying to determine if he is a predator or not. He doesn’t know which answer she really wants anymore than he did this morning and he wonders if it would even make a difference. Would saying the right thing in this moment change any of the things they didn’t say in all those other moments?

She is a bird with a broken wing, unable to fly, and he is the hand that crushed her by holding on too tight, and he has to let her go but he doesn’t know how. If he says yes, will he hurt her even more? If he says no, will she continue breaking his heart?

“Let’s go back,” he says at last instead of answering. “Let’s go back to Melbourne.” He doesn’t just mean to Melbourne, of course. He means ‘go back to what we were before, who we were before’.

She looks at him, eyes searching, a flicker of hope in them that he clings to. “Do you really think we can?”

“I think we have to. I don’t think we can stay here, like this. Do you?”

She smiles sadly, moves closer until she’s standing right in front of him, her knees bumping against his. He spreads his legs and she shuffles forward until she’s standing between them. “I thought I wanted to. But no, I don’t think we can. I don’t think I can do that to you.”

He laughs at that, his chest as hollow as the sound he makes, his heart in his throat as he forces himself to let go, to make her fly again. “I thought I was the one doing it to you.”

A hand reaches out, stroking his cheek, and he feels his skin tingling, an all too familiar reaction to her touch, and he grabs it, his fingers wrapping gently around hers, and turns his head to kiss her palm.

“Perhaps we’ve done it to each other,” she suggests, her thumb brushing along his lower lip when he turns his head to look up at her again. He closes his eyes, the feel of her touch burning itself into his mind where it will stay, haunting him forever, the last caress.

He feels her hand pull back, his skin cold and longing for her already, and after one steadying breath he opens his eyes to find her already gone. He turns his head and she smiles slightly at him across the room, already pulling out her suitcase. “Let’s go home, Jack.”

He smiles back, forcing his lips to curl that way, refusing to let his eyes close again, and then he nods.

It happened, once, that he had her, and then they lost each other.

_END_


End file.
